The Claremont School of Theology, the Islamic Center of Southern California, and the Academy for Jewish Religion California are partners in a new effort to educate leaders for churches, synagogues, and mosques in shared classes.

“The whole system is greased to pay hospitals and others for expensive things people might not even want” at the end of life, says Dr. Lachlan Forrow, director of ethics and palliative care at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston.

“It’s impossible not to ration, it’s irrational not to ration, and it’s unethical not to ration” medical care at the end of life, says this professor of ethics at Harvard Medical School and director of the Harvard University Program in Ethics and Health.

"If anything is covered by separation of church and state, this is it,” says lawyer Douglas Laycock, who argued for the Hosanna-Tabor Lutheran Church and School, and nearly 100 diverse religious groups filed briefs supporting a church’s right to choose its own ministers.

The September 30 killing in Yemen of radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki is reigniting an ethical debate: Should the US use armed drones outside combat zones? Watch excerpts from recent interviews on drones and the ethics of war.

Religious leaders have joined civil rights activists, the Justice Department, and others in challenging Alabama's tough new immigration law. "The government is trying to tell us what we can or can’t do in terms of works of mercy, works of charity, which are fundamental to our faith," says Father ...